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Sunday, March 27, 2016

Carne & Caipirinha [Invited Tasting]

Carne & Caipirinha is an ideal place for meat lovers and someone who enjoy authentic Brazilian cuisine. Better known as a Brazillian churrascaria, a restaurant serving grilled meat to as much as one can take.

Carne & Caipirinha

Therefore, if you think the title of "Meat Lovers" suits you, do indulge in this All-you-can-Eat Brazilian Churrascaria located at Sunset Way in Clementi.

Carne & Caipirinha

Dining concept is pretty simple with tables and chairs placed in front of their restaurant on the raised wooden flooring like the rest of the eating places beside. The 74 seater restaurant offers an alfresco dining experience and ideal for people who love such dining style.

Dining Environment

They are the one and only Brazilian churrascaria in Singapore that adopt Charcoal in their roasting method. The slow-roasting process allow meat in getting rich and smoky flavours. A key highlight of importing meat from Brazil is not only about their quality but that their flavour of beef tastes differently from American and Austrialia's thus look forward to this different gastronomic experience.

Roasting Process

Other than serving roasted meat, the restaurant also offers a buffet counter consisting of salad, pastas, rice and even traditional Brazilian Feijoada (black bean stew). Let's have a look at some of the dishes on the buffet counter.

Buffet Counter

Up keeping its authenticity, this black bean stew is actually a National dish in Brazil and can either be served with pork or beef. In fact most part of the pork can be found in the stew and they were boiled till soften yet retaining its original flavours. If you don't mind eating innards or parts of pork, give it a try!

Brazilian Feijoada (Black Bean Stew)

Its good to indulge yourselves with some vegetables as sides before the real meaty challenge kick start. Egg plants were baked and was rather spongy with spices and condiments at its top.

Baked Eggplat

Even during mid way if you find that you need a break from those slow roasted meat, head back here to have some greens. In my opinion, I find that these sauteed mushrooms with onions and celery were good.

Sauteed Mushroom with Onions

Another side dish you may be interested is their butter corn on the cob. They are slightly charred on the outside yet retaining its juiciness.

Buttered Corn on the Cob

However if you want to make money worth while, it will be good to plan the use of your stomach space efficiently. Focus more on the skewers meat than the counter buffet items.

Cold Pasta Salad

These baby potatoes come good as side dishes to complete your meaty meal. Do be mindful as it contains starch and will fill your stomach easily, have a few but do not overeat ya!

Roasted Baby Potatoes

Describing these items as the Palms' Hearts but in layman terms this is the bamboo shoot that we have on most Ramen dishes.

Palm's Hearts

Ta-Da! Here's a bite of everything from the buffet counter.

My Selections from the Buffet Counter

Using the original and authentic recipe from Brazil, Caipirinha is in fact one of Brazil's finest invention and signature tipple. Its refreshing and tangy flavours together with a bite of citrus infused with a shot of the finest liquor made this beverage outstanding.

Caipirinha - $12

Teetotalers, grab yourself a can of Guarana Antarctica, the first ever soft drink produced in Brazil. This soft drink is produced in only 3 countries and is now available here. It uses some kind of berries and is definitely refreshing but not too sweet.

Guarana Antarctica - $6

A popular snack and breakfast food in Brazil, Pao de Queijo (Cheese Bread). They were cute and small in size, baked and served warmly.

Cheese Bread (Pão de Queijo)

Just take a good look at the cheese Bread. Beware, they are really addictive.

Cheese Bread

They are actually quite malleable and fragrant in which reminds me of Japanese Mochi. However if you are preparing to eat more meat later, you must control yourself on this as they are actually make up of starch and cheese are really very filling.

Its Filling

The servers cum chefs also known as passadors, were smartly dressed in the traditional gaucho outfits. They are professional in service and never fail to smile at the diners even though they were sweating all over with a hot skewer on hand.

Happy Passadors

They will go around the restaurant from tables to tables bringing their skewers and carve the portion of meat right on diners' plates. This concept of serving known as rodizio is very popular in Brazil.

Skewers are hot.

We started our meat eating rounds with the smallest items first and they were sausages and bacon wrapped chicken. They came together with a steel plate as its base.

Start of churrascaria

Indicate your interest to the passadors and they will serve you right away at your plate.

Serving Sausage and Bacon Wrap Chicken

This disc will be very useful as it helps you to give an indication to the passadors if you will like to have more meat. The disc has two sides, the red and green, the concept works like traffic light with green instructing them that you will like to have more meat while red representing to stop serving the food.

Disc

Add a bit of salsa or even crashed croutons / bread crumbs to your meat for additional taste.

Condiments

While the sausages were the preliminary start, these chicken thighs looked enticing. The smoky flavours and the glorious looking lined up thighs were simply irrestiable.

Chicken Thighs on the Skewer

Let's try it!

Chicken Thigh

While the pork belly scored at its crackling top layer with glistening and chewy fat on the skewer.

Pork Belly on Skewer

A simple and close up of the pork belly let us distinctively discover its prominent layers of fats and meat.

Pork Belly

The lamb had a gamey taste which may not be suitable to everyone.

Lamb Leg

One of the premium meat that is hard to find in Singapore. These meat are actually from cow with hump and only found in the humped Brazilian cattle known as zebu. They also contain more marbling than other meat.

Beef Hump (Cupim)

Beef Rump is nothing as compared to the Hump. Meat is tougher here but still the good slow roast brought out the flavours.

Beef Rump

The chunky pieces of Escolar Fish that looked like bread on the hot skewer were cooked beautifully and had a strong buttery fragrance.

Fish Escolar

Though it was chunky and had a good taste, we were told not eat more than 4 pieces as it is high in fat content and rather oily as our digestion system may not be able to take them.

Fish

Another must try by the restaurant would be the chicken heart, it was said that those who do not love chicken offal will end up enjoying this delicacy. They are firm and tender, however still, they are not my kind of food.

Chicken Heart

These grilled pineapple was rubbed with cinnamon power and was sweet. This is the only slow roast item that gave us a break from those overwhelming selection of meat served to our table. Its serves as a very good fruit to have after all the heavy meat we had.

Grilled Pineapples

"The FireBomb" is a seasonal promotion that you might not want to give a miss.

Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese Wheel

Following the food trend, Carne & Caipirinha offers Flaming Carbonara Pasta in cheese wheel too. The freshly cooked carbonara pasta was placed in the large Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese wheel and was tossed. There then the staff would prepare the flaiming cocktail consisting of 3 secret blends of alcohol and pour into the wheel. The pouring process allow the flames in melting the cheese as well as charring the pasta which in turn give out a different kind of aroma. Once the flame dies out, additional cheese will be added from the wheel into the dish before dishing out to the diners.

Preparation of The FireBomb

The FireBomb gave me a different prospection of having carbonara and having carbonara is not just dull with mushroom, bacon and cheese only. Instead, the alcohol had lifted the dish making it more savoury. For those who are interested, FireBomb is available at $10 per serving. However if you prefer just only carbonara, serving is unlimited.

FireBomb

Though Pork Ribs looked delectable and fall-off-the-bone kind, I was way too bloated with amount of food and drinks I had in my stomach.